Serpents Rising. David A. Poulsen

      Dedication

      To my family: my dad, Lawrence; my mom, Leona; my wife, Barb; and to Murray, Amy, and Brad and their families. This is for you with endless thanks and love.

      “Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged.”

      — Hamlet

      Prologue

      May 2005

      Date night.

      We’d gone to a movie — Million Dollar Baby — long after everyone we knew had seen it. It was one of those theatres that plays really good films but months after they’re first released. The movie was Donna’s choice. She cried through the last half hour. I hung in until the final ten minutes. We sat through the credits to let our eyes dry before we left the theatre, holding hands and smiling at each other as we made our way up the aisle toward the lobby.

      We stopped for a drink on the way home. The Kensington Pub, one of our favourite places. Donna liked it because it made her think of England, where we’d never been but kept promising each other we’d go one day. I liked it mostly because it was a place that made Donna happy. And I like beer. Donna had a white wine, I drank a Mill Street Coffee Porter. We didn’t talk much about the movie. In a day or two, over breakfast or maybe dinner, we’d discuss it then.

      When we got home, I went inside just long enough to change my clothes. Donna came to the door to say goodbye, already in a nightie that reminded me how small she was. Her slim jogger figure was not without contours; her curves were evident through the nightie and I inwardly cursed having to leave. She slid her arms up around my neck. “Maybe you should phone in sick.” She nuzzled my neck.

      “Clint Eastwood always brings out the tramp in you,” I told her. “Which made sense when he was Rowdy Yates. Or even Harry Callahan. But now … whoa.”

      She laughed. “I’ll settle for you going in late. At least an hour.”

      I kissed her and she kissed back, which did nothing to diminish the very non-work-related feelings I was trying to suppress. I gently separated us, turned to the door, and stepped onto the front step, her “Your loss” and throaty laugh ushering me outside. I stopped on the step and glanced back at the door and the tacky little sign Donna had insisted we place just above the doorbell; she’d had it made at a booth at a farmer’s market a few years before: THE CULLENS LIVE AND LOVE HERE.

      I jumped down and did a not bad imitation of the guy dancing in the Viagra ad on my way to the car, knowing she’d be watching from the living room window. Watching and laughing as I drove off to work.

      Work — a meeting with Martin Caveson, a lawyer who made a living representing the seamier element of Calgary’s criminal population. His office was near the Victoria Park police station. The area had once been a badass part of town — a home turf for the city’s drunks, crackheads, low-end prostitutes, and a couple of the nastier gangs. Now that the Calgary Stampede had bulldozed most of the old neighbourhood for the expansion of its grounds, Vic Park was gentler, though not nearly as interesting as it had once been.

      But Caveson had kept his office right where it had always been. His clientele had farther to travel, but it didn’t seem to diminish business any. In fact, in the three-quarters of an hour I was there the phone rang three times. Caveson did me the courtesy of not answering any of the calls.

      The shaved head was the first thing you noticed; Caveson was sixty-ish, well dressed, even for an evening meeting, light blue sport jacket over a pale yellow pullover sweater, the collar of an expensive dress shirt and perfectly knotted tie, also yellow, poking out over the crew-neck of the sweater.

      He didn’t get up as I entered the office. He’d made no secret in our previous meetings or my phone call of a couple of days earlier that he harboured a long-standing and unshakeable dislike for members of the media.

      He looked up from some papers as I came in, gave me a mouth-only smile, and nodded at the well-worn chair opposite the desk. I sat. His desk looked teak or something equally exotic; a high-end Apple computer perched on a wing of the desk at an angle that made it impossible for the person sitting opposite Caveson to see the monster screen.

      The chair he was sitting in looked both comfortable and expensive. Original pieces of modern art dotted the walls and even the plant in the corner to the left of the desk looked like it had been imported from a country with a hot climate and a long name.

      I pulled out a notebook and pen and got ready to take notes. Caveson had warned me up front that a tape recorder wouldn’t be permitted.

      The night had cooled and Caveson had his window open, reminding me of just how much it had cooled. About ten minutes into our chat, I stood, zipped up my warm-up jacket, and sat back down. Caveson didn’t make a move to close the window or even acknowledge that the person sitting in his office — arguably his guest — was uncomfortable. Sweetheart of a guy, Caveson.

      I was interviewing him for a series the Calgary Herald was doing on crime in the new millennium. Now that we were five years in, where were we at — more crime? Less? The different kinds of crime. Where did kids fit in? The impact technology was having on crime. The impact crime was having on technology. That kind of thing.

      I was co-writing the series with two long-time friends and colleagues, Janice Mayotte and Lorne Cooney, good journalists, both of them, Janice the better writer, Lorne the better digger. The research was going well and I was excited about what we might end up with. Still, some parts of the project were less fun than others. Caveson fell into that category. I had drawn the short straw, which meant a late-night meeting (the only time he’d see me) at his office (the only place he’d see me).

      For a while I thought I might actually get something. A name or two that we didn’t already have, maybe even a peek at what the city could expect from its less desirables in the next few years. But Caveson, after spending the first twenty minutes of our meeting telling me that he was unquestionably the best person to talk to for the information I was seeking, spent the next twenty letting me know that he wouldn’t be sharing any of it.

      I managed to leave his office without telling him that I thought he was the slime in slime ball, and congratulated myself for exercising remarkable self-restraint. I dutifully drove back to the Herald building, parked my aged Volvo in the parking lot on the east side, and walked up two flights of stairs on my way to the cubbyhole I laughingly referred to as my office. I was determined to get into my computer what little real information I had wheedled out of Caveson.

      I never made it. Lorne Cooney was pacing, head down, back and forth in the hallway outside my office door. I saw him before he saw me. The sheen on his brown-black face was evidence that the building furnace had not yet been fixed and I would be transcribing my notes in sweltering discomfort.

      The joke around the Herald for the last few days had been, “writing is hell.” Journalist humour.

      I grinned. “You must have something real good to drag your sorry ass down here at this hour.”

      He looked up, saw me. “Jesus Christ, man. Why do you even bother to own a cell phone? I’ve been calling you for a half hour at least. Even tried to get you at Caveson’s office. No answer there.” The hint of the Caribbean that was barely evident in Lorne’s voice became more pronounced when he was agitated. He was agitated now.

      “Yeah, his phone rang but —”

      Lorne stepped close to me. The look on his face was all wrong, way too tight, too tense, something …

      “You need to go home right now.”

      There was no little turn at the corners of the mouth, no prankster trying not to laugh, not this time. No smile, not even in the eyes, which is what usually gave him away.

      “Why